


contradictions

by charcoalsuns



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 05:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7496490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/pseuds/charcoalsuns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By his third year at Karasuno, Kurokawa has well realized the volleyball club isn't what it once was.</p><p>It may still be too late for him, but those who are one and two years later to arrive aren't the kind to simply accept their situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	contradictions

**Author's Note:**

> For a character with relatively very little appearance, I am inordinately interested in Kurokawa, and here are some of my feelings (others, I am still trying to form into a gen character exploration ^^;;).

He leaps through the doorway in a white t-shirt, opposite of surrender. 

He holds the collar of his first-year gym uniform hostage, guarded within a small, firm fist that flies upward as his feet catch the ground. 

Two squeaks of conquest vibrate across the bruiseless floor, echo through the cold, empty air, and rise to silence where he stands. 

Longer than lightning, he grins. 

Away from the open doors, away from the barred windows, goosebumps shiver across Kurokawa’s skin. 

 

//

 

There are seven new members of their—his—their volleyball club. 

Team.

Club. 

Kurokawa has their applications in one hand, checks them over with a pencil in the other as they introduce themselves, one by one. The now-second years look nothing short of ecstatic to see so many here. He reaches, past the dry paper lining his throat, for excitement, hope, a match; any of the sparking television pixels he’s let slip through his fingers like lemon juice. 

_We don’t have a coach,_ he says, just to get it out of the way. 

_We may not have any practice matches, either. But we practice every day after school until five-thirty, and when we get to the Inter-High preliminaries, that’s what we’ll carry with us._

They chorus in affirmation, bright voices, not yet broken. His own pitches humorously deep in comparison. 

He hopes they’ll enjoy themselves here, and says so as closing. 

He doesn’t smile. 

 

//

 

This year, serve practice might be Kurokawa’s favorite part of the afternoon. He keeps an eye on the others, as befits his gilded title, but for the most part, each of them is on his own, each lost in varying degrees to the repetitive motions and thuds scattered across either end of the court. 

He isn’t sure how to help them, and as he watches through the net as one of the first years laughs amiably at another’s missed serve, he isn’t sure if he should.

It's not that he’s _given up._ But of late, his dreams have been blunt, rooted things, and he knows that the way Karasuno is now, they don’t stand a chance. The teams who will compete for the national tournament soar ever higher, and there is no one here who has wings. No one here to show them how to fly without them. 

Still, he jumps. 

Just before he crosses the back line, just high enough to swing his arm forward, to strike the ball he’s tossed a thousand times, true and thunderous. 

Since he took to this, few opponents could ever receive his serve on the first try. 

Not that it matters so much, anymore. 

There’s a flash of white in his periphery as he’s watching the ball, its course storming down through the center of the court. Two soft squeaks that ring like trumpets in his ears. 

The ball _floats,_ gentle, free, an offer of possibilities on a quiet breeze. No one is waiting in position, but it arrives perfectly above an imaginary setter’s head, and for the moment, Kurokawa cannot move. 

 

//

 

_“Nishinoya Yuu, from Chidoriyama Middle! I’m a libero! Man, your team jerseys are cool! Solid black, like the school uniform, and zips that go all the way down! In middle school, our jerseys only zipped halfway; the teeth always got caught, and it was always tricky to change out of them without getting stuck, and—”_

On the opposite side of the net, head already turning to track the next ball, he doesn’t make a sound. 

 

//

 

“Captain!” 

Kurokawa has long become used to this exchange. Perhaps, before summer, he should remove the keys from his inside pocket and entrust them to Sawamura instead. 

He turns around, faces the second years – wide eyes and hidden cheekbones, trying, ever trying, to mold themselves into bodies tough as concrete and more substantial than dreams. “Yes?” 

“We’d like to stay and practice, if it’s all right with you and Sensei!” 

Like a television script. 

“It’s fine with me. One of you let him know, and don’t stay too late,” he says. “Make sure you get your studies done.” 

“Yes! Thank you!” the three of them shout, and he thinks their voices, at least, have grown a bit lower. He turns to exit the gymnasium. 

“Thanks, Kurokawa-san!” 

He doesn’t trip over this unexpected flare of a call, but there are small aftershocks under his feet as he pauses. They rattle in his chest and blow open his eyelids, and while he can hear the other first years bowing their goodbyes and someone hissing _Nishinoya!_ across the gym, this phenomenon of a boy is grinning, still, swiping the sweat and melted hair gel from his face, meeting Kurokawa’s eyes like he’s never thought to hold himself back once in his life. 

_Why?_ Kurokawa wants to think, directed at him, at these club members who aren’t letting out yet. But he has learned not to question the winds that drive them forward; they aren’t, he tells himself, for him to understand. 

“Sure,” he answers. “Don’t catch cold.”

Five routine minutes later, he blocks out the evening chill as he steps back outside the clubroom, pulling the zipper of his jersey up from his waist to his neck. His breath clouds like morning mist beneath the yellow streetlights.

Alone, adrift on a mild sea of his own half-acknowledged regrets, he holds himself as stone, taking no shortcuts on his way home. 

Unfading, unyielding, a guileless energy remains, larger than memory, behind every tired blink of his eyes. A torch to reverse the sunset; a straightforward puzzle Kurokawa thought he’d already thrown away. 

 

//

 

 _Instinct,_ Kurokawa knows. 

He possesses it, utilizes it. He can never quite explain it, how he watches an opponent and feels his own joints and muscles react in corresponding movement, how the lines of his palm fit against leather stitches as swiftly and naturally as do the flat undersides of his forearms. 

Nishinoya Yuu embodies instinct. 

He embraces it, as though _reason_ does not beckon to him at all. 

And when Kurokawa watches him shift and leap and dive across the court like an unbroken explosion, watches him tame the hurtling momentum of a hundred spikes and serves, sees him collect welts and bruises in an excess of battle wounds, he knows it does not. 

He wonders, against his learned judgment, if Nishinoya is a kind of whirlwind he should stop attempting to explain. 

 

//

 

He straightens to his full, incongruous height, jabbing his thumbs over the shoulders of his t-shirt at the kanji newly emblazoned on his back. 

_One-man army._

He conquers one receive after another, and is never satisfied. 

He is the sole one of them with wings, and without jumping, without looking down, he flies. 

Brighter than fire, his grin and gaze are only ever aimed forward. 

 

On the other side of the net, long sleeves pushed above his elbows, Kurokawa prepares to run up again. 

_One more._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two (who I've been calling HiroNoya) are I think my rarest of pairs, and I hope I've written them in at least some justice here. 
> 
> Thank you extra much for reading this! ;_;

**Author's Note:**

> These two (who I've been calling HiroNoya) are I think my rarest of pairs, and I hope I've written them in at least some justice here.
> 
> Thank you extra much for reading this! ;_;


End file.
